I think it will depend on how Obama does in the next election, but obviously, a good thing to keep an eye on are the speeches at the convention, at least for potential newcomers to the national stage who will be aiming for candidacy.

I sort of wish that Howard Dean would try again as for not to have been defeated by that scream gaffe thing.

Republican Presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney often fends off the attacks comparing the similarities between the plan he signed in Massachusetts in 2006 and ObamaCare by saying he took a federalist approach. The former Massachusetts Governor says his plan was done on a state level, where the central theme to both plans, the individual mandate, was a actually a conservative approach.

But in a July 2009 op-ed in USA Today Romney thought the President could learn a thing or two from the plan he signed into law in Massachusetts, including using the individual mandate as an incentive for people to buy insurance.

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Quote:

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

Romney continues further down in the op-ed bringing up the individual mandate dreaded by conservatives.

Quote:

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

Why the GOP gets its knickers in such a twist about Obamacare is beyond me. It's a bonanza for private healthcare - it forces everyone to buy a policy. There is no public option as originally envisaged. The plan was initially drawn up by the Friedmanite Heritage Association ffs. When Romney says it's a conservative policy, he's spot on. Not that will stop the Republican base from crucifying him over this.

_________________Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

Virginia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Georgia, Vermont, Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee all vote today. Wyoming votes over the next 4 days and then Kansas, Guam, North Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands vote on Saturday.

Polling suggests that Romney will win Virginia, Massachussetts and Vermont, whilst Gingrich should win Georgia and Santorum in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Ohio is close between Romney and Santorum whilst the others are quite open.

His spokeswoman told the Guardian: "In Texas, we base our policy decisions on sound science and what is ultimately best for our citizens. Man-made global warming remains but a theory and one where thousands of scientists remain sceptical. It would be irresponsible to put our entire economy at risk based on unproven science..."

Gallup has now finished its first six full weeks of tracking surveys for the 2012 presidential campaign, interviewing 20,565 registered voters. Yes, you guessed it: President Obama and Mitt Romney are tied, 46 percent to 46 percent. The margin of error for a sample of this size is just under seven-tenths of a percentage point; Gallup, though, modestly reports it at +/- 1 percent, for the sake of simplicity. One benefit of a poll this size is that it allows you to look at demographic subgroups of voters without worrying about big margins of error. So when you get a chance to look at "supersized" data, grab it.

Each day at 1 p.m., Gallup.com reports the three-day moving average for Obama's job-approval rating. At the same time, it also reports the seven-day moving average for the presidential-election trial heat between Obama and Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, by averaging more than 3,000 interviews a week. Each Monday afternoon, the Princeton, N.J.-based granddaddy of polling firms reports detailed demographic breakdowns for the combined most recent three weeks of interviewing. This week, Gallup released six full weeks of results. The first half of these were interviews between April 11 and May 6; the second half were from May 7 through May 27. (It's a good thing that I am not addicted to this stuff.)

The gender splits were almost perfectly symmetrical in the two batches. Among women, Obama led Romney by 7 points, 49 percent to 42 percent, in the first three weeks, and by 8 points, 50 percent to 42 percent, in the second. Among men, Romney had an 8-point lead, 50 percent to 42 percent, in both the front and back halves of the six weeks of interviewing. If you recall, in 2008, the exit polls showed that Obama edged Sen. John McCain by 1 point among men, 49 percent to 48 percent. Among women, he beat McCain by a whopping 13 points, 56 percent to 43 percent. Among white males, Romney had leads of 27 points in the first three weeks (59 percent to 32 percent), and 25 points in the second (59 percent to 34 percent). Among white females, though, the Romney advantage was considerably narrower: a 9-point lead, 50 percent to 41 percent, in each half.

If Romney wins, all hope of social progress in the USA in the next 4-8 years goes down the toilet. American couples of the same gender will not be able to marry in most states and people possessing personal amounts of soft recreational drugs/underage alcohol will risk going to prison for doing something that may only harm themselves, if at all. Corporations will get a free run as the economy gets flushed down the toilet and the 1% gain immense riches from asset stripping and extra profits through less regulations in employment law, whilst the middle and working classes struggle, and crime shoots up. I honestly can't fathom why people other than inbred hicks and the super rich would support Romney?

If Romney wins, it screws the US for more than just the next four years. The Supreme Court nominations (as well as other federal judicial appointments) made by a Romney presidency will reach far into the future.